Russell Davies has finally come up with a competitor for iCal. It is a lightweight app that boots incredibly quickly and it can sync with all other user agents in your direct vicinity instantly - regardless of OS.

Learn more about the MacBook Proto

I was just watching the directors commentary on “The Prisoner” DVD, and they referenced that one of the actors went on to be the voice of Bill and Ben, The Flower Pot Men. Well, I did a little digging, and I found out that Bill and Ben, The Flower Pot Men was a British children’s television show, or a segment of a show rather, from the 60’s. It featured two marionettes that are, well, flower pot men. They babble at each other in incoherent gibberish. The whole thing is really excellent. From concept to intro music. When is Timbaland gonna sample that theme song? Only time will tell.

The origins of The Flower Pot Men

Great web site + great perverts = great cover are compilation. Over 1500 album covers with some sort of nudity included can be viewed. If you are an album collector / pervert like me, you have found mecca… so lay down a small carpet, kneel, face your computer screen and start praying. Be sure to poke around the site, as it is an excellent collection of cover art in general and there are many other great cover compilations. Link

Salvia, the new Mexican designer drug that has been used by Mazatec Indians for centuries to channel spirits for centuries has gotten a web 2.0 makeover. This potent hallucinogen is 100% legal almost everywhere and can be bought in highly concentrated forms online. The drug basically detaches your brain form all social constructs and makes it difficult to interpret sensory input while providing a euphoric sensation coupled with intense hallucinations. A full trip only lasts about half an hour when smoked, but the most amazing part is how quickly the effects of the drug overtake the body and mind. And the coolest part, people are tricking others in to ingesting highly concentrated doses, videotaping it, and putting it on youtube.

Random Good Stuff has a collection of people freaking out on Salvia. Pretty enthralling stuff.

And if you are brave enough, you can score some Salvia here

Also, a free hour long documentary on the stuff.

Lennon’s on sale again, ya’ll: The 55th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, just opened a couple of weeks ago. I have yet to see it, but loved visually groping the pix posted on Artforum.com’s website of all the lawmen and sailors during the opening.
Our invitation to the Brillobox afterparty must have been lost in the mail.

Here lies the venerable Robert Rauschenberg, purveyor of quality content-laden Abstract Concrete Expressionism. May he rest in peace.

(above, his Able Was I Ere I Saw Elba II from the Anagrams series).
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As a Pittsburgh Penguins fan, I have been very remorseful about not following their progress very closely over the past few years. I watch highlights on the news, and listen on the radio when there is a game on and I am in the car, but that has been about it. However, I have an excuse. I do not have cable television, and all of the games are broadcast on the cable television channel Verses. Aside form watching an occasional game on NBC broadcast TV @ 1:30 in the afternoon on Sunday, I have been a totally whack fan.

So anyway, I figured out how to stick it to the man! I refuse to pay for almost any media, and I am certainly not going to start paying for cable television, the lowest form of expression in popular media. So, my friends, if you don’t already know, HERE IS HOW TO WATCH ANY LIVE EVENT FOR FREE!

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I recently joined this ultra nifty animated gif group on Flickr (be sure to click on the “view all sizes” link at the top of each image to see the animation on Flickr). Animated gifs are an art form that is slowly tapering off in popularity, but they provide a really rad effect. I equate it to the Polaroid film of online media. Totally lo-fi but some how simultaneously geeky. And they are super easy to make. The one pictured above creates a stereoscopic illusion by shifting camera angles slightly between a left right and center position all about 6 ” apart. You can make animated gifs in photoshop or with any of a number of other programs.

Here is a good animated gif tutorial for Photoshop. There are plenty of others out there. Simply Google “your program” + “animated gif tutorial” … duh!

Link

Joseph Stalin, commissar of the original “Great Purge,” pre-empts Photoshop with spiffy manual photographic evil: Witness Newmuseum.org’s site, a great beginner’s index of Stalin’s orders to erase various individuals from photographic evidence of his reign.